Love it. Wish Sailer had decent permalinks.
Sailer on Neocons and Chechnya:
I'm still wondering why the neocons insist on having a dog in this particular fight. As a conservative, my Burkean prejudice is: 'First, do no harm.' I look at the Chechen tragedy and say, 'Sheesh, I have no idea what should be done over there. If I got involved, I'd probably just make it worse.' So, instead, I think more about how I can help my country avoid getting involved in that kind of mess.
In contrast, neocons seem to wake up every morning thinking, 'What far-off, complex, interminable conflict should I turn my penetrating brilliance upon today?' It must be nice to feel that self-confident, but it sure isn't conservative.
John Quincy Adams:
... friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers ... should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?
Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.
She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.
She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
In other words: a moral foreign policy. What's that worth in lives?
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